24-Hour Party People: Manchester Mayor Wants End to COVID Pub Curfew Amid After-Hours Home Boozing

Greater Manchester Police reported that party-goers on Saturday night packed into shops to buy more alcohol after the early closing time, then gathered in the streets to keep drinking or headed to impromptu private parties at home.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has said the 10pm pub curfew does “more harm than good” as revellers keep boozing in the street or at home.

He called for an “urgent review” of the UK-wide early closing time, imposed last Thursday in response to rising numbers of coronavirus cases, after police reports of Saturday night mayhem in the city centre.

“There needs to be an urgent review of the emerging evidence from police forces,” he said, adding that the curfew should “probably be lifted” 

Burnham proposed a 9pm limit on off-licences sales to stop tanked-up Mancs from crowding into shops at closing time to stock up for all-night raving.

“My gut feeling is that this curfew is doing more harm than good,” the mayor said. “It is potentially contradictory. It creates an incentive for people to gather in the streets or more probably, to gather in the home. That is the opposite of what our local restrictions here are trying to do.”

Burnham, a former Labour MP and shadow cabinet member, insisted he was not trying to “score points” against Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservative government, and understood why the measures had been put in place.

Burnham’s comments echoed those of Greater Manchester’s night-time economy advisor and former rave organiser Sacha Lord, who tweeted on Sunday that “every operator predicted this” and called the policy “shambolic”.

Also on Sunday, Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson said the 10pm closing time was even “making things more dangerous” after a Saturday night incident where a crowd of drinkers gathered around a street performer after the early closing time.

But Health Minister Helen Whately defended the curfew on the BBC 1’s Breakfast programme.

“As people drink more they tend to socially distance less,” she said. “So one approach to keeping people socially distancing is to limit the amount of time that people are in places where they are drinking and then this breaking down of compliance with the rules.”

Manchester, the UK’s third-largest city, has long been famous for its music and nightclub scene that spawned such acts as The Smiths, Joy Division, The Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses and Oasis.

Sourse: sputniknews.com